June 1, 2025

Seventh Sunday of Easter
celebrating the Ascension

A New Future

Acts 1:1-11

The Acts of the Apostles opens with an odd story of the Risen Jesus floating away into the clouds, leaving his disciples with the promise that more would be revealed in the days to come. It’s hard to imagine what those disciples might have seen. Did he rise up like a rocket ship? Float like a balloon? Vanish like Captain Kirk in a transporter beam?

And once he was up in the clouds somewhere, where did he go? Is that where God lives? For people like the writer of Acts who trusted that God lived in the sky, this is a way of picturing Jesus moving from our Earthly realm and into God’s; but for those of us who imagine planets and stars in outer space, instead of angels and harps above the clouds, the events are harder to visualize.

What does this story mean? What is the author trying to tell us? What changes in Jesus – or in his disciples – as Jesus’ former students move through the time between the resurrection on the first Easter Sunday, and Pentecost when the church is empowered by the Holy Spirit?

I wonder if what changed is that the disciples started to see Jesus not simply as their beloved teacher come to life again, but as something more, something bigger, something higher. I wonder if this story about Jesus ascending to be with God is more about a change in how they saw him, rather than a change in where his physical body was located?

The Easter Sunday stories are more reassuring than empowering. How astonishing it must have felt to come to trust that their beloved teacher wasn’t extinguished after all! How long did it take for the disciples to get over their immediate sense of relief, and start to realize that this was going to create work for them? The catastrophe of Good Friday had been so devastating, it must have taken time to come to grips with the simple fact that Jesus wasn’t dead any more. Forty days seems like as good an estimate of that as anything else – forty days to move from grief to astonishment to awe to trust that the Romans hadn’t won after all. Knowing how long I personally take to come to terms with an earth-shattering life change, it certainly makes sense to me that they would have needed some psychological processing time before they could even begin to think about what came next.

And after that processing time, as they’re beginning to realize that this resurrection didn’t just mean they could go back to being students again – but BEFORE they get any clarity on what they might be expected to do instead (because the story about that happens next week!) – there’s this story of Jesus ascending to God. Or maybe to Godhood? Is this, maybe, a story of how those grieving and then reassured students came to see the Risen Christ as one with God, and not simply as a wise teacher? Maybe this is a metaphor for how Jesus rose in their esteem, and not a description of how his body rose in the air?

Ever since, of course, we Christians have had no hesitation in describing Jesus as “Lord.” The title is peppered throughout the rest of the New Testament. It was the first Christian confession. It was a title that got Christians in trouble with the Romans, because of how political it was. Those who considered Jesus to be “Lord” were making it very clear that Jesus topped Caesar. If Jesus is your Lord, then Caesar isn’t. Neither is Donald Trump, or King Charles, or the Invisible Hand of the Capitalist Marketplace. If Jesus is your Lord, then you take your marching orders from that Lord; you see the world through that Lord’s eyes; you make your decisions in a way that does your Lord proud; you march to a different drummer than all those around us who see other persons or ideologies as ultimate. If Jesus is Lord, then it is Jesus’ way of measuring success that you strive after; it is Jesus’ way of assessing happiness that leads to a life worth living.

When Jesus is Lord, his teaching is more than “interesting;” his way of living is more than an ideology for historians to argue about; his ethics are more than simply one moral code among many. When Jesus is Lord, Jesus sets the tone for all who claim allegiance, and shapes the identity of all who bear his name.

How do you see Jesus? How does Jesus’ life, and Way, function for you? Have you noticed in yourself a shift from being “interested” to being “dedicated?” Has Jesus ascended in your own thinking, feeling, decision-making?

Join us on Sunday as we reflect on what it means to claim that Jesus is more than simply an interesting character out of the mists of history, but a living and active reality to whom we give our allegiance today.